Tag: reviews

Digital engagement creates information at the edge

Increased digital engagement is creating more data, which can be very useful for marketing as David Moschella discusses in this TV show. Digital engagement is more powerful that marketing messages Well increasingly the information at the edge, in our view the information created by customers prospects, the community at large, is the single [...]

Digital engagement creates information at the edge

Increased digital engagement is creating more data, which can be very useful for marketing as David Moschella discusses in this TV show. Digital engagement is more powerful that marketing messages Well increasingly the information at the edge, in our view the information created by customers prospects, the community at large, is the single [...]

Connected marketing that uses digital channels to engage with customers is more effective and cheaper than what came before, as Stan Rapp explains in this TV show.

Connected Marketing is a fundamental change

Technology has changed marketing, fundamentally. It is changed it in the best possible way. It has lowered the cost, and increased your opportunity to come up with a tremendous ROI. There never has been a better time for marketers. Once you have a website, and once you have Facebook, and once you have Twitter, you are in better touch with your customers than the traditional direct marketers ever were with their direct mail. People are welcoming your messages. They're looking for you.
If you are interested in ideas about connected marketing and the digital economy, please browse more videos on Connected Economy TV.

Digital engagement not just a buzz word

Digital engagement gives businesses a fantastic way to connect with customers and build their business, as Don Peppers explains in this TV show.

Digital engagement: Who do consumers trust?

If a business wants a home in the future, they have to have their own collection of friends who wish them well, of customers who want them to succeed, of customers who want the best for the brand because it's also the best for them. I think a lot of businesses think of engagement as sort of the marketing buzz word du jour. But it's not a buzz word. it encapsulates a very, very important real thing, that businesses today have more capability to actually participate in interactions and conversations and relationships with individual customers, one customer at a time, then they've ever had before.
Keep an eye on Connected Economy TV if you are interested in digital engagement. There will be more expert discussion and industry success stories.

What can social networking do for start-ups? Business development tips from Louis Gray

Communication strategy for start-ups

Communication strategy should start with a blog and expand on Twitter and Facebook according to Louis Gray, who gives his business development tips in this TV show.

Communication strategy and social networking

Companies getting started in this type of environment where the economics are difficult can actually leverage this type of weakness to look bigger than they are. One of the best things about social media is that people don't know the person behind the activity all the time. And so you have the tendency, if you do things right, to look like you're big, look like you're engaged, and get the word out. Social media is very cost effective. Somebody who can actively work social media can save tremendous amount of dollars versus traditional advertising. As a startup, your product is going to sell itself through differentiation. If you get bought in people who will communicate with you.
So as companies, be they startups or established, get started in social media, the first thing they want to do is have a central location where people can find out as much as they can about the company. Typically that's a blog. A blog can enable personal one-to-one communication from the highest levels within the company. After that, it really makes sense to get onto Twitter and Facebook and these other networks to hear what's being said, both about you and the industry. But without that blog, there's nowhere to go. So you make sure you have that blog, and then build out the social media ecosystem underneath that, which may include the other networks.
Keep an eye on Connected Economy TV for more discussion on communication strategy and social media.

Access to data comes with responsibility

Businesses have access to data from more and more individuals who are entering email addresses and phone numbers in to online forms. In this TV show Gerald Lawless explains why respecting individuals information is paramount.

Access to data in hospitality

In the hotel business we really have to understand our responsibility to our guests to maintain the confidentiality of that data. And this is something that is so abused around the world. I mean we all receive these silly phone calls and you wonder how people got your mobile number, apart from me putting it on my business card, which always doesn’t help. But it is important that we treat that with great respect, with great care. And yes, use it but use it in a way that doesn’t annoy the guest, and this is important. So we write and say, “Do you want to communicate with us?” If they don’t want to, well then that’s fine and we respect very much the confidentiality of the guest data that we hold.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow discussions around access to data and data usage.

UK innovation: we’re not quite world leaders

UK innovation: we’re not quite world leaders

In this TV show John Kay discusses UK innovation. He compares new business development here to what is happening in other countries'.

More UK innovation please

I don’t think we have lost the art of developing new businesses and there are lots of people in the small, medium size enterprise sector who are developing exciting new businesses. But I think our success in developing businesses with competitive advantages over the last two or three decades doesn’t compare very well with the United States on the one hand that has created really exciting businesses of the Apple, Amazon, Google type or with a country like Germany where a lot of quite long established power house businesses have gone on developing their businesses successfully in new markets. There are some British companies that have been successful in these kind of ways but not enough and we need to try and ensure there are more of them.
Connected Economy TV will continue to look out for examples of UK innovation and will be following the surrounding discussion.

Louis Gray explains how to drive you social marketing strategy with a great blog

Connected marketing through blogging

Businesses now use more connected marketing. In this TV show Louis Gray explains how to drive you social marketing strategy with a great blog.

Connected Marketing and social strategy

If you're going to look at a blog, and you have to make frequent updates, you want to have to really know your product, and know your market and know your industry and care about it. If something looks forced, it is forced. And people aren't going to want to engange with something that looks like you did it just because you were told to. In order to have a successful blog that gets engagement from readers and potential customers, you need to really know your industry and study it. And have an energy to engage. And to have unique articles that can come out with the level of frequency that people will be return visitors, and find out that you're participating.
There are a number of companies who have embraced blogging. Two of them, and specific example, include Sun Microsystems and Cisco. Both of those companies have managed to take what's typically a very large enterprise, and turn that into a social experience for you have communities. Each one of those companies encourages its employees to participate, and speak on behalf of the company, with limits. You don't want to disparage the company. You want to speak about its products and its customers in a good light. And not to violate any kind of confidentiality and secrets you may have with partners or the company itself. It's been fantastic to see these companies that are traditionally closed, open up and really start to engage the rest of the blogosphere.
Companies that operate blogs, typically you want to see an update no less than once a week. The truth is, if you don't have enough content of unique nature to publish more than once a week, maybe you shouldn't be blogging. There's some people who also publish much more frequently than that. Upwards of multiple times a day. That depends on the topic, the subject matter, and what the individual knows about that space, where they can deliver unique content with value frequently.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow ideas around connected marketing. Look out for more shows from Louis Gray.

Digital engagement allows companies to work with customers

Digital engagement is a big opportunity for companies to gain customer confidence. In this TV show Stan Rapp says smart companies have moved beyond “doing to” their customers.

Digital engagement: Strategy is crucial

We now have the opportunity to do so much more activity on Facebook, on Youtube, on Flickr, and so on. How we do it, what we do with the ability to do, is critically important. Unfortunately, there's been a past heritage of doing to the consumer. What I mean by doing to is in the old days you bombarded the consumer with your brand message until it penetrates, and now you change that consumer's behavior. I'm going to take that consumer and press them, and turn them in my direction. That's a doing to thing. Also, we do things to our customers to help us make more money in the short term. A good example, of course, is the financial industry, and banks, with the fees that they've laid on-- with the airlines, with the baggage fee, and somebody said a airline in the UK is going to charge to use the toilet next. I doubt it, but who knows what they'll think of? Of course, the frustration with travel is so intense, not only for the passengers, but for the crew, as well. We saw what happened recently in the media, about a terrible explosion of that temper, but everyone understood it. I think what was most striking about the steward evacuating and denouncing the passenger was that nobody was surprised, because the airlines have been doing so much to the passengers and to their employees by pushing them and demanding more. I remember when the airline stewardess was something to look forward to on the plane, because she looked after you. Now, she's the garbage collector. They've done something to their employees and something to their passengers. That's the doing to thing. If we're going to get involved and engaged, it's what we do with and what we do for that's important, because when now can do things with our customers, because we know who they are. They come to us either at our website, or they come to us on Facebook. They come to us because they start with a certain degree of confidence in us, and sympatico with the product.
Connected Economy TV will continue to look at digital engagement and its effect on business.

Connected marketing in a digital market

Social media means that business are going online and achieving more connected marketing. In this video Don Peppers explains why today’s market demands are different marketing.

Connected marketing conversations

Don Peppers: Every business out there is focused on generating sales and generating profit, but you can't do that simply by taking advantage of customers. You've got to do it by working with customers and participating in the conversation now. You're not going to be able to continue doing business the old-fashioned way. You have to participate in these new social media.
Micheal Fisher: I do not know in our history a period of time where a channel and a group of technologies could be more disruptive to a brand, than where we sit right now.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow ideas around connected marketing.

Digital engagement analytics have been of growing interest to businesses as they want to know exactly what impact their social media marketing campaigns are having.

Digital engagement analytics in marketing

Over the last ten years, people have really taken a lot of looking at analytics for their website. People want to know how many page view you're getting, how many unique visitors, how many click-throughs did you get, what was the percentage click-through on a banner ad. Some of those elements we're finding are less useful than the end result about ROI. You know, what was the revenue that you generated from your website? What was that brand perception that was improved by seeing your content on another site through public relations or partners and customers talking about you?
The new elements in social media people are still coming to grasp in terms of what's a successful campaign. What is the good result? How many followers do I need to consider this a success? How many click-throughs do I need to have success? Those same analytics that you've been running on your website can be run on social media. I can know how many clicks every single Tweet received. I can know how many followers I received over a given time period. I can know how many re-Tweets or how many forwards that I received from a specific campaign. I can know how many new people commented and interacted with me on my Facebook fan page. So each of these elements are converging, so you can find out just how many people you directly influenced through a campaign, how much reach that received, and whether that was a good use of your money and your time.
In any corporation, a marketing team needs to prove that it has value. Every single campaign needs to show that it had success, or every single message needs to be continually tweaked to make sure it's hitting the right people at the right time and saying the right things. If you are measuring your success in social media, you can help validate the activity that you're doing. You can help show direct results in terms of engagement with people, in terms of creating new customers, and in terms of helping your brand, both in popularity and in relevance.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow ideas around digital engagement and analytics.

Disruptive technology in hotel booking

Our clients have become even more dependent on their own internal systems as to how they book, how they get their own internal customers to book, they're forcing them to compliance intranets.
They're utilising systems like ours to interface with those so they become external booking agents. So in our case we have a guest portal, that that client now with all of their SLAs are completely loaded on to that portal that is specific to that company.
So actually they don't have to go to the travel department. If you are relocating it will tell you what your allowances are, it will tell you who to contact, it will have internal confirmations on.
You get your confirmation back though that portal. It eliminates complete interfaces in many cases, with their own internal travel department, which has reduced obviously labour.
Efficiency and accuracy has improved, thats a big dramatic change for many companies.
If you found this TV show about disruptive technology and hotel booking systems, please browse more interviews on Connected Economy TV.

Increased digital engagement is creating more data, which can be very useful for marketing as David Moschella discusses in this TV show. Digital engagement is more powerful that marketing messages Well increasingly the information at the edge, in our view the information created by customers prospects, the community at large, is the single